Since the advent of central dictation systems which employ discrete tape carriers such as cassettes, various approaches to the problem of identifying individual cassettes have been tried. In both central dictation systems, and office systems employing individual cassette dictation recorders direct labeling of each cassette with a distinct number has been common practice.
This type of system presents several disadvantages, one of which is that when dictation is recorded on a particular cassette, there is not necessarily any relationship between the cassette number and the time sequence in which the dictation recorded thereon occurred. Furthermore in many dictation systems, it has been necessary to maintain an external log to identify which segments of dictation are recorded on any particular cassette.
In the central dictation system disclosed in copending application Ser. No. 782,947 now abandoned filed Mar. 30, 1977 which is assigned to the same assignee as the present invention, a central control unit assigns a sequential serial or index number to each cassette as it is ejected from the cassette recorders shown therein. A coded equivalent signal of this number is recorded on the tail end of the recording medium of each cassette. Application Ser. No. 782,947 shows a central unit which has a playback cassette reader associated therewith that will read the recorded code from each cassette and print a label usually displaying the serial or index number. This requires the operator of the central unit to remove the cassette from the playback reader and manually apply the printed label to the outer surface of the cassette.